To Build A Home
by shutupfrenchie
Summary: Orion planned one alien baby. He didn't count on 3, and definitely didn't plan on raising them alone.


**Brief A/N - Yeah everyone here is named after Mass Effect characters. This is the basic story of my current generation in a year long Sims game and with all the space stuff I just... named the first kid Shepard and had to follow the theme and it wouldn't feel right to change it for this story, so...**

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I believed my brother and I were twins until I was 12 years old. It made sense, I guess. Two alien babies in one household… even with a weird dad like mine, what were the odds?

We grew up in a... scientific environment. Everywhere throughout the house, there were curiosities, wonders, to my mind like magic artifacts. A lamp that hovered, a coil that spit sparks and electricity, a cloning machine for when food was scarce... even with the help of the cloning machine Katelyn still couldn't be bothered to feed us most days. Or, I guess, feed me. My brother always had enough. More than enough.

Katelyn was an enigma. Hard to define. She was a mother but never felt like it to me. She was distant but overbearing in that she was there and I didn't want her to be, and while she neglected me to the point of near starvation, she couldn't be called a bad mother. My brother had everything he needed and more. All the food, toys, hugs and attention a growing boy could ask for. I always thought it was because I was a weird, bald, big-eyed pointy-eared alien baby while my brother was blessed with more human features and thick, curly blonde hair. Maybe I reminded her of herself and she didn't like that.

I don't blame my dad for staying with her as long as he did. She was a convincing liar and played the part of doting girlfriend and mother well. He would trudge off to his government job every morning, leaving me and Shepard with Katelyn. As soon as he was gone, she would turn to Shep and give him hugs, kisses, cuddles. The moment my father left the house I became invisible. As any unsupervised toddler is bound to do, I made messes. Lots of them. Not all intentional. Sometimes my diaper would get so full I would take it off wherever I was. Sometimes I would try to get food from the refrigerator and drop it all over the floor. Our cat Leo helped make messes sometimes, and I loved him for it.

When dad would come home, Katelyn would play the part of distressed mother; she told dad all about how I was so difficult. How I refused to eat and how I wouldn't listen to her, opting instead to rampage around the house destroying all I touched. I don't know what dad told himself about that. I don't know if he believed her. All I know is that when he came home he would pick me up and hug me tight, get me food and talk to me about his day. After, we would clean up the house together and he would put me to sleep, clean and happy and loved in spite of the horrors of the day without him.

As we got older and started school, Katelyn became unbearable. I learned to disguise myself very convincingly. Long, brunette hair, pretty blue-green eyes, olive skin and a perfectly proportioned body- despite my real form being sickly and malnourished. I would have kept on the disguise all the time except that Katelyn made me take it off when I got home. Now that I was 6 I could mostly take care of myself, but unlike when I was a toddler she seemed to want to stick her nose in my business whenever possible. Nag nag nag. Tali, homework. Tali, clean up Leo's puke. Tali, clean this dish you dirtied. Tali come watch this boring movie with me. Tali, wash your face. Tali why are you so bony. Tali don't slouch. Never ending criticisms, a barrage. Locking myself in the room I shared with my brother helped just a bit but I could always hear her laughing at the TV downstairs.

When we were 9, she withdrew into herself and spent almost all of her time in the observatory out back. That was fine by me but Shepard missed her terribly. He would sit in the grass outside the door of the telescope, pushing dirt around and waiting. I busied myself making subtle, subtle adjustments to my disguise. It was comforting. Almost an obsession. I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted, with the house to myself, and that was how I spent the time. In front of the mirror molding and shaping myself into the perfect human.

Dad was looking older and more tired every day. Sometimes during the summer Katelyn would drop us off at daycare and go "check on daddy" at work, trying to "catch him in the act." I don't know if dad ever cheated. I want to think he wouldn't but if he did, I wouldn't blame him. Katelyn retreated further and further into her shell and only came out to argue. They started fighting more, often in the back yard after dad came home from work late. They thought Shep and I couldn't hear but we would always wake up and listen from our room upstairs.

Finally, on our 11th birthday, it all boiled over. Dad made two cakes, one chocolate one strawberry. Shep blew out his candles first as he was oldest by just a few minutes. I blew out mine second, and everyone dug in.

It was an honest mistake. An accident. I had my plate of cake and ice cream and on my way back from the counter to the table Leo darted in front of my feet and I tripped. I caught myself but the plate fell to the ground. Cake and ice cream covered the tile and a little splattered onto Katelyn's shoes. Before dad could tell me not to worry about it, Katelyn stood, stormed over to me and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, pulling me close to her and snarling in my face. She called me a 'little bastard' and my dad's 'illegitimate alien love child' and shook me, dumped her plate of cake onto my head, then tossed me away. I fell into the mess, right on my tailbone. My head just barely avoided slamming into the counter. The kitchen fell silent.

I had never seen dad so angry before, and haven't seen him so angry since. He took Katelyn outside where they argued for hours while I cleaned myself up. I'll never forget the way I looked in the bathroom mirror that day; wire thin and sickly pale purple, big black bug-eyes set deep in my gaunt face. Naked and shivering, covered in drying cake and ice cream. Disgusted, I activated my disguise and thought I might never take it off again.

When I came out of the bathroom after an hour long bubble bath, Katelyn was gone.

It was like the quiet moments after a storm when you don't quite believe it's over yet, so you stay close to shelter. Every day when I came home from school I expected her to be back, lounging on the couch or staring at the sky in the observatory. She never was. She called Shep almost every day, but he only answered once a week and kept the conversation short.

"She was never nice to you, was she?" he asked me one summer afternoon after they'd talked for about 10 minutes. "I never noticed. Tali I'm sorry. I should have been a better brother."

"You're the best brother," I told him. "You were a kid. Kids don't notice that stuff."

"We're still kids, dork," he laughed. "I notice it now. Looking back. She was bad, just like Mila and the others."

I knew he was having trouble with bullies. We were almost 12 now and he had started working out. Not much, just lifting some of dad's heavy rocks in the basement lab. He was still stick thin but was determined to stick with it until he could defend himself. I thought it was strange that despite being mocked every day for being an odd shade of blue, he loved his skin. He wasn't able to disguise himself like me but he didn't want to. Sometimes I was jealous of his confidence.

Summer dwindled slowly by, and one cool night shortly before our 12th birthday, we were awoken by the sound of someone- dad probably- opening the back door. A faint green light filtered in through our curtains. I peeked out them curiously while Shepard looked out across the hall to confirm that dad's bed was empty. The yard was bathed in the same green light- and suddenly it flared, flashed a brighter green and I saw out of the corner of my eye.. our father, being lifted by a beam. It faded slowly and was gone, with our father.

"Shep," I whispered, frozen in fear. "Something took dad."

Panic. Raw panic. Loss. Fear and anger heavy in my stomach, my head light and spinning like a top.

"What do you mean?" he asked uneasily. Through shaky breaths I explained the light.

"Maybe it'll bring him back," he suggested helplessly. "Should we… call someone? Call dad's work?"

It was a long shot but our only idea at the moment. We hurried across the hall to dad's room- a lump formed in my throat at the sight of his empty bed, his sheets, his scent still lingering in the room- and got his cell phone from the bedside table.

"Future Sim Labs, this is Alexandra speaking. How can I help you tonight?"

"This is Shepard, and Tali," Shep said. We had met her a few times, at work lunches and outings.

"It's late guys," she said disapprovingly. "Why aren't you in bed? Where's dad?"

I took the phone and told her what I'd seen. She was quiet for a while, too long.

"Tali, I have to call this in," she said. "Don't panic. Alien abductions aren't common but they happen, especially in your dad's line of work. They usually do bring the person back. It's what happened before- to someone. Someone I know."

"Really? Who? When?" Shep snatched the phone back, almost seeming to forget dad was missing.

"No one you know," Alexandra said firmly. "Just… stay inside, ok? I'll report this to the proper authorities, they'll keep an eye on the situation. He'll be back before you know it."

He was back before we knew it. A few hours at most. The beam returned and dropped him right where it picked him up from, and he stood in the yard for a minute, sighed tiredly, entered the house. Shep and I dove back into our beds, pretending to be asleep. We heard the door open, silence for a moment, then a gentle kiss on my head. I heard him do the same for Shep before the door closed again.

Life returned mostly to normal, except for the weird symptoms dad noticed. He gained weight. He felt sick some mornings. Shep worried he was sick, but I thought it was just after effects from the abduction. Dad, however, seemed to have an idea of what it could be. He seemed resigned to something, hesitantly accepting of something he didn't want to accept. It was only when his stomach started growing that I started to get an idea of what might be going on.

"Shep," I said as I lounged on top of the monkey bars. The trees were crimson, orange, yellow and the air had a sharp snap of cold to it. Shepard hung from his knees nearby.

"Hmm," he grunted, acknowledging.

"Do you think dad is pregnant?"

"Umm…" he hung silently for a moment, looked up at me. "No, not really."

"No, seriously, think about it," I said. "He's been sick in the mornings, his back hurts. Look at his stomach, Shep. And remember a few nights ago he smelled the cookies we snuck upstairs from the kitchen?"

"But he's a… men can't get….."

"You've seen the movies," I continued. "Men get abducted and come back pregnant all the time in movies."

"There's no way, Tali," Shepard said dismissively. "You're just overthinking. Come on, let's go for a walk."

8 months later, our baby sister Edie was born.


End file.
